This year feels like a rerun in some parts of Northern Santa Barbara County. In Santa Maria, Will Smith is again running to unseat longtime incumbent Mayor Alice Patino.
It’s his third time running for the spot against Patino.
With his checkered past, I’m not sure in what world enough people exist to help him get his name on the ballot, but I guess it’s in Santa Maria. Smith, who’s long been a Santa Maria-Bonita School District agitator, prides himself on well, being an “agitator.” It’s a badge of honor for him. And he seems to believe that the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing’s decision to take his teaching license away due to misconduct that included physically and verbally assaulting students was due to “false accusations.”
“It’s a close, tight-knit community,” Smith said. “If they like you, they push you. If they don’t like you, they dog you.”
He got a lot of stuff done, you know? And people didn’t like it.
“Respondent [Smith] engaged in various deceptions and falsehoods that involved moral turpitude. When confronted with evidence of his misconduct, … he offered false explanations. He ignored or rebelled against the discipline imposed on him. He was not honest on a number of levels,” an administrative law judge wrote in the initial credentialing decision, which Smith fought and lost.
Sounds like a stand-up guy! Well, he’s right about one thing. He’s consistent. But not in the way you might want a mayor to be.
Not only does Smith have a consistently shady history, he seems to think that eminent domain is the way to go when it comes to development in the city.
“We need to take a look at where we can expand, even using eminent domain if we have to because we are going at such an alarming pace right now,” he said.
Interesting. I wonder how property-owning voters feel about that proposal?
I’m not sure it’s the direction we want to take city policy.
Meanwhile, in Lompoc, another political upstart who didn’t make it very far is again running against incumbent Mayor Jenelle Osborne. Jim Mosby—the classic in-your-face politico who claims fiscal conservancy as his motto—didn’t do enough to dig Lompoc into a hole the first time around.
He’s ready for another go!
It’s also his third time running against Osborne. Third time’s a charm?
I’m not sure that the city, which is finally out of the financial hole it was living in with Mosby on the City Council a few years ago, can take another term of the instigator. He’s claiming that the city had a “big boom” while he was on the council (from 2014 to 2020), but my little bird-brain can’t remember that.
All I can remember is the infighting, bitter commentary, and the extreme belt tightening that didn’t do the public any favors. Mosby managed to shave a bunch of people out of the city budget, rile up the Police Department, and eventually do the very thing he didn’t want to do in the first place: put a sales tax increase on the ballot.
I’m pretty sure Mosby isn’t the kind of man who learns from his mistakes. He likes to double down on the gambles that didn’t work in the past. Is Lompoc ready for another trip to the casino?
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